I recently bought one of these (the $249 version) more out of curiosity than anything. It's a pretty bad experience that has led me to believe that ARM is as much the issue as anything. It is slower than molasses to load even a reasonably complex Web page. Slashdot and even GMail peg the thing... four or five seconds minimum to start reading.

And because it's locked down, Google pre-loads a bunch of obscure Chrome extensions that would otherwise be separate programs. Besides that, the build cheapness makes it a throwaway.

I love my Nexus 7, which is a bargain and constructed properly for the tablet use case. (It's also slow to load pages, leading me to suspect ARM.) Anyway, Chromebook is a netbook without any flexibility.

I've argued for years about the need for a single, free authoritative certificate provider, and the Post Office is the obvious candidate. There's no need to do any deep checks or inspection though... Just make sure that the certificate is the same from use to use. Then let the history of usage improve its quality over time; e.g., certificate reputation. If I have paid utility bills and taxes with a certificate over a period of time, you can be pretty sure it's legitimately me. Yes certs can be stolen/lost, but teaching the importance of good practices places the burden on the user, and in any event it's preferable to expensive verification processes (which as we know can be gamed).

Where are my mod points.... Right now even elite colleges are finding it hard to get all the full-tuition students they need. My daughter enrolled at a top school this year which gave us a no-strings-attached discount that dwarfed the cobbled-together combination of (grade-contingent) scholarships, loans, and grants that her other options offered. Now she's getting a household-name education, plus perks like great professors and a single room. Of course she's doing all the work and taking full advantage of everything on offer there.
Now's the time to go a little contrarian in your educational choices.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Sunday November 21, 2010 @11:48PM
from the one-of-many dept.

dkd903 writes "Mozilla wants to make it big in the Mobile world and has revealed its plans for a unique mobile app store in its annual report — 'The State of Mozilla,' which was released recently. Mozilla has already brought the desktop Firefox experience to mobile devices as the Fennec browser, which was initially launched for the Maemo platform on Nokia N900. Mozilla has designed a prototype of a mobile app store and plans to call it a 'Open Web App ecosystem.' The aim is to create an open app store platform that would consist of apps that can run on all mobile devices: — A 'Mobile Device Independent' App Store."

Same deal here. Except for the fact that 3G will *never* be supported on AT&T with this phone (I called and they said "oh you have the T Mobile version"), I love this puppy. But it does seem to be a second class citizen.
That said, I've done both the original Froyo and the FRF72 update. Just have to go looking for them and do it manually. The big benefit for me was better landscape handling of applications, especially the phone application in the car dock.

I just got a Nexus One too, and admit that I never used an iPhone to compare it with.... but here's my assessment: You need the fingers of a friggin' safecracker to make this thing work consistently. I don't consider myself graceless*, and with practice it's a bit easier, but all I can say is thank god for the voice recognition -- that works sweet! I can pull up a Web site or call someone with one touch, so it all balances out.

...because you're even asking the question.
This is about people who can't, or don't care, to take any trouble to change defaults -- in other words, the vast majority of computer users. This is exactly the same principle Microsoft has employed over the years: "We'll just do whatever we want and the people who understand it, will find a way to stay out of our clutches. Everyone else we own." Same principle behind Facebook's recent "Privacy enhancements" and all the software that takes over every option of your PC when you install it (Microsoft, Adobe, AOL, Apple, Real....).

As H.L. Mencken pointed out, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public," and that thought extends perfectly to the computing public. Unfortunately the bad guys understand this.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday October 12, 2009 @01:30PM
from the drawn-to-please dept.

caffiend666 writes "'Marge Simpson is posing for Playboy. The magazine is giving the star of The Simpsons the star treatment, complete with a data sheet, an interview and a 2-page centerfold. 'We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd,' said Playboy spokeswoman Theresa Hennessey. Playboy even convinced 7-Eleven to carry the magazine in its 1,200 corporate-owned stores, something the company has only done once before in more than 20 years." Worst issue ever!